Doing What You Love

There’s a saying I hear a lot as a writer that I’ve come to really hate. It goes: make a career of something you love and you’ll never work a day in your life.

*incorrect buzzer sound* Wrong answer! In fact, whenever confronted with this annoying adage I usually argue the opposite is true. Because I have pursued my passion as a career, it actually means more to me than the average day job. Which is not to denigrate day jobs, of which I’ve had many. But I’ve invested not only time and effort into becoming an author, but also a bit of my own soul made manifest in paper and ink and many, many words.

Writing is work. Hard work. But what I think that saying is driving at is this: when you make a career out of something you love, you should be able to find some measure of joy in it every day. And sometimes I wonder whether I’ve lost the joy that brought me to writing in the process of trying to monetize my passion.

I’ve written for as long as I can remember. My mom recently found a handwritten story I wrote when I was six or seven–illustrated and bound with yarn–about a clever farmer’s wife who tied chickens to pigs in order to trick her useless husband into doing chores. By the time I was nine, I was filling notebooks full of rambling tales about a warrior princess named Jade and her faithful unicorn steed. By twelve or so, I somehow acquired an old typewriter and spent long hours clickety-clacking away on its half stuck keys (I’m sure my parents were sooo proud). In high school, I wrote such excellent essays that my Lang/Lit teacher frequently asked me to read them aloud to the class (why yes I was the teacher’s pet, why do you ask?).

Writing was a hobby, a passion, a joy, a solace–something I did in my spare time because I wanted to. Because I loved it. Hardly anyone read anything I wrote, and it didn’t occur to me to want it any other way. Because I wasn’t doing it for anyone but myself.

And then I took a fateful elective Creative Writing class my junior year of college. And when we workshopped my first short story, all the other students loved it. They compared my writing to F. Scott Fitzgerald, my favorite author at the time. Words like “provacative” and “professional” were thrown around. And when the professor returned his feedback he stapled a list of literary journals to the front with the suggestion that I submit to them when I was ready.

And so a monster was born. Suddenly, it wasn’t enough to write for just me anymore. I kept writing–private diary entries and short stories no one read and the seeds of some of the books I would later write in earnest–but it wasn’t quite the same. A voice in the back of my head kept whispering: what if you could do this as a job? And suddenly, the reason for writing shifted, minutely at first and then irrevocably, until I wasn’t doing it for myself at all but all the faceless people who might one day read my words.

I’ve written about my journey to publication in other posts, so I won’t reiterate here. It was a long trek, and a lot of hard work, and I’m proud of everything I learned and everything I accomplished. I’m not complaining. I feel incredibly fortunate to have been able to pursue my passion, and reached some measure of success with it.

But success is a funny word to define. I remember when I first started seriously writing, I used to tell myself: if I can just finish a novel, I’ll be happy. That seemed enough. Later, when I was neck deep in the query trenches trying to get my first few novels published, the mantra became: if I can just sign with an agent, I’ll be happy. Eventually, that too came to pass. Then it was: if only I can sell a book, if only I can sell its sequel, if only if only if only if only…

When does it end? When will it all finally be enough to “make me happy?” If my books hit the NYT Bestseller’s list, will that be enough? If my books are translated into every human language, will that be enough? If my books are ejected into space as a symbol of the sum of human arts and culture for visiting extraterrestrials, will that be enough?

Enough is enough. The more I think about it, the more I think it’s time to get back to basics. I have to find a way to make writing about the writing again. It’s going to be hard–the fact of the matter is, I am a published author now. Other people do read my writing and will continue to do so (at least I hope they will). I’m not sure I’ll ever really be able to forget that my words don’t belong just to me anymore. But I want to try to have them start out that way, at least.

Why did little Lyra write stories about clever farmer’s wives and spunky princesses and talking unicorns? I don’t know. But she didn’t do it because anyone was going to read it. She didn’t do it because the plot was marketable or the characters were trendy. She didn’t do it because she was on deadline and just had to write something. She did it because she loved it.

I want to learn to love what I do again. I don’t know yet what I’m going to write, but when I do write it…I think it might have to be just for me.

If Love was a Train, I’d write better.

This morning I remembered Michelle Shocked. I hadn’t thought about her in years, but I loved her first couple albums. Here’s a link to a live version of My Little Sister. Such a good song! Back in my cover band days, we used do Little Sister and If Love was a Train.

Good stuff!

I didn’t take many liberties with Michelle’s vocal style. Like, I pretty much copied her note-for-note. Well, maybe not every note but I stayed true to the way she interpreted the songs. Save that thought for later.

The thing that made me sad about remembering Michelle is that when I googled her name, I got her Wikipedia page, a couple hits about a supposed homophobic rant, followed by her apologies for said rant…or denials, or something. Then I went to youtube, and all I could find were really sketchy covers of some of her songs.

Dear god I hope my band sounded better than that.

Which got me thinking about writing. Okay, you’re right. Just about everything gets me thinking about writing, but still. The thought I’ve been chewing on this time has to do with what’s good and what’s not.

It seems to me that the difference between me and the authors that find a place in the broader cultural landscape is larger than the difference between Serena Williams and that seventeen year old kid she played on center court in Arthur Ashe Stadium last night.

Catherine McNally played well – she won the first set, which is not easy to do against Serena – but by the middle of the second set, they could have been playing in different universes.

Catherine is good. Serena is the best, possibly ever.

The thing that hangs me up is figuring out where I fit on the spectrum between “good” and “best”. Do I even reach “good”? I don’t know, and sometimes that uncertainty makes it hard to get any words on the page.

There’s this contradiction between “there’s so much crap out there” and “everyone’s voice is important”. Can both, “you’re a shitty cover band singer” and, “you are uniquely creative and no one else can tell your stories” be true?

And does it matter that my old band’s version of If Love was a Train doesn’t stray far at all from the original?

I don’t need to be Serena, but I’d like to see if I could play on the same court at least once.

I’ve been pondering whether it would be worth my while to get my MFA, maybe at one of the low-residency programs that focus on genre fiction. (I can’t stand to read much literary fiction, so don’t look for me on the lit fic bestseller list, like ever.) They programs I’ve looked at are expensive (!), and while I’m sure I’d learn, I’m not sure I’d learn more than I could teach myself by, you know, reading and writing.

Artists learn to paint by copying the masters. Singers learn to scat by mimicking Ella Fitzgerald. (And yes, I’ve had Mr. Paganini on constant rotation in my brain for the last couple weeks.) I’ve never sat down and said “I’ma write just like _______,” but I do take mental notes while I’m reading.

And I read a lot, hitting just about anything but horror and YA. (And Lit Fic, but we already covered that.) I read, and I write, and I try to push myself.

You may be wondering what brought on this little bout of naval gazing. See, I read an article about the Dunning-Kruger effect. That’s the one that says when you first learn something, your confidence is low because you know you don’t know anything, but once you learn a little, your confidence goes up, higher than your relative skill would warrant.

Once you move toward expert, you know what you don’t know, and your confidence goes down.

Here’s me, down at the bottom of the well.

I won’t ever play as well as Serena, and I do still tend to sing a lot like Michelle Shocked, but I have too much writing to do to worry about how my work will eventually be judged. So, on that note…

…if you can’t sing it, you simply have to …. swing it!

You Can Take a Break; You’re Still a Writer

The last two posts have been about being stuck while working on a writing project. I’ve seen a lot of this lately; so many creatives are struggling to work in the climate we’re all facing.

When I was young, a teenager, I reveled in my dark, black moods to create my best work. I even did better writing term papers when I was unhappy. And some people stay that way their whole lives — they need that dark place to tap into their creative muse to get words or other art done.

But as I’ve grown older, as I’ve turned this into a job, I’ve found it much harder to work when I’m in a dark place or when life is being difficult. I don’t want to create magic and monsters and adventure. I want to curl up and be alone with my dogs and husband and shut out the world. Even if I’m working on something dark or difficult and it brings me down while I’m working, so much so, that when I leave my office I have to physically shake it off, I don’t need to first be in that place to write those words.

I participated in Camp NaNo in April. I set myself a goal of 40k words. In the beginning, it went like any NaNo usually does. I had my outline and was ready to get started and felt good about my daily word counts. But, as the month went on, and things in my life weren’t perfect and outside things started to drain away my energy, I found each word that much harder to type. When I finally hit my 40k word goal, I was relieved. I had one day to spare, but I did it. Obviously, that’s not the whole book. But with everything else going on outside of writing, my hubs and I agreed we needed a week to decompress. So I promised myself if I hit my NaNo goal, I was going to take a week off from writing to get my head right again.

That was last week. This week, these are the first words I’ve written. We planned our “take a break” week from everything but the bare minimum at just the right moment. We run a business together and we had an emergency happen last week that, had I been writing, would have taken any energy away from my daily goals. We’ve weathered the emergency and I think the ship is righted and we’re going to be okay, but I am so glad I gave myself permission to take a break from my book.

This book is from my favorite series and if I had continued to write while dealing with so much, I think it would have suffered and when the editing came around, it would have been a snarl of a headache to fix.

I used to say you had to write every day when you’re working on a project. Yeah, take the weekend off, or a day here or there if you like working on the weekend, but don’t abandon the project because you’ll lose momentum and the narration and it’ll be so much harder to pick back up. But I needed that break. It’s okay to take a break. The book will be there when you get back and if you’re serious about writing, you’ll go back to it.

I’m 40k words in, the beginning is always a huge hurdle and I’m almost half-way done, so there’s no reason for me to be scared that I can’t pick it back up.

We have to give ourselves permission to take a break when we need it. Burn outs and break downs are real and horrible and if you can see one coming before it hits, you should do whatever you have to to avoid it. We all need self-care and sometimes that means dealing with life while your imaginary friends take a seat and wait for you to come back.

Well. This isn’t quite where I thought this post was going to go, but there you have it. I’m nearly 20 books into the business, so I think I can safely say that each book is different, each book will ask different things of you and you just have to trust your gut with each one. Some will come hard and fast and you’ll never take a break because you’re just trying to keep up with the words yourself, and others will take their time and give you the space you need, you just have to let yourself take it.

It’s okay. You’re still a writer. Every book has its own process.

The Things I Never Thought I’d Do

Sometimes I stop what I’m doing, look at my life, and say, “Wow. Of all the things I never thought I’d be doing… well, this is one of them.”

I don’t mean only bad things or exciting things. Some of them are really mundane, grown-uppish things, like paying my HOA or going to the hardware every single weekend because we still don’t have the right part for the stupid broken garbage disposal. Some of them are pretty cool, like selling jewelry on Etsy. A few of them are really freaking bad, but we don’t need to talk about this here. This isn’t a post about bad or sad things. It’s a post about exciting new horizons.

Every year, instead of a resolution, I try to pick something I want to learn in the coming year. One year it was spinning (fiber, not one of those stationary bikes), another year it was guitar. This year it’s dyeing fiber, though I have so much going on that I’m not going to beat myself up if I don’t get to it. I don’t look at a new year as a chance to stop doing something, or a time to reinvent myself; rather, it’s a new opportunity to grow and learn. I don’t want to stop being me, and that’s so often what resolutions are about. But I can help me to become more like the me I’ve always wanted to be.

That sentence got away from me a little.

Here’s what I mean: once upon a time, a sixth grade girl liked wearing jewelry and listening to Celtic music and reading about Arthurian queens who spun their own yarn. While I’m not still her, not completely, I still like all those things. And every day, I like to try to do something that helps me satisfy that core me. I still like Celtic music. I make some jewelry now. And by golly, I do spin my own yarn.

But at the same time, I’m now a 30-year-old woman with a mortgage and a house that needs decorating and repairing. I need to satisfy her needs and wishes, too. So maybe instead of taking Irish dance lessons, like that sixth grade girl would want, I take a class about color in design, and that applies both to the jewelry-making and the house decorating.

Do you see what I mean? Sometimes doing the things we never thought we’d do—and never doing the things we always thought we’d do—is a good thing. It means we’ve grown and changed, that we’ve lived long enough to develop new wishes and dreams. And it means that every time we do one of those things, we’re taking a chance and making a new opportunity for ourselves.

And that’s pretty exciting.

What do you do now that you never thought you would? 

 

 

Don’t Stop Believin’

There’s a video that’s been floating around the interwebs these past few weeks that touched me to a surprising degree. Actor Jim Carrey is mostly known for his over-the-top comedy, but it turns out he is also capable of heart-felt poignancy, as you can see in this clip from his commencement speech at a recent graduation:

I think many creative types–especially writers on the journey towards traditional publishing–will relate to the sentiment at the heart of Carrey’s speech. Sometimes, the path towards whatever you’re passionate about seems impossibly twisting and muddled, a constant uphill slog pocked with unseen pitfalls and unexpected backtracking. Taking this “road less traveled by” (as per Frost) is a perilous gamble with terrible odds. And sometimes the temptation to give up can become almost overwhelming.

I am by no means exempt from these dark thoughts of failure and I often wonder if I ought to have chosen a more “practical” path, like Carrey’s father in his speech. Because doing something different is frightening, and lonely, and often discouraging. But I thought I’d share some of my own methods of coping with these worries, and why they work for me.

1) Accepting the fear and examining it.

Nothing chases fear away like staring it square in the face and saying “I know who you are.” Fear is natural, but to a certain degree it is also a choice. And when my fear gets so overwhelming that I’m ready to give up, I take a step back and try to think about what exactly I’m afraid of. Am I afraid that my life choices will leave me homeless and starving? No. Am I afraid that they’re making me a bad person, or denying some truth within myself? No, and no.

Usually, when I really think about it, the things I’m afraid of are so incredibly unimportant. I’m afraid of people not respecting me. Or I’m afraid of people laughing at me. Or I’m afraid of my voice not being heard. These are not real fears; at least, not real enough to make me give up my dreams.

“Sisyphus,” by Titian

2) Commiserating with people in similar situations.

The world is full of people trudging down the same tough, frustrating road that you are. Some of them may be behind you on the path, and others may be far ahead of you. But it’s still the same path. And wherever they are on that path, they can relate to what you’re going through, and may even have some tips on how to keep moving forward. While being a creative can sometimes feel isolating and lonely, no one is alone, and sometimes all it takes to chase the fear away is to reach out to others in similar situations.

3) Looking to those who have succeeded on your chosen path.

For every author with a tale of an agent deal on their first query or critical acclaim on their very first book, there are 100 authors with stories of multiple rejections and years and years of struggle and woe. Stephen King, J K Rowling, Agatha Christie, George Orwell, William Faulkner, and even serial best-seller Dan Brown had multiple manuscripts rejected by multiple publishing houses before their writing ever earned a cent. Some of the rejections were quite harsh, too: one editor told Vladimir Nabokov that his now world-famous novel Lolita ought be “buried under a stone for a thousand years.” Yikes.

But regardless of the onslaught of rejection they faced, these writers never gave up. And eventually, they all proved themselves to be worthy after all.

“Because when it comes to dreams, one may falter, but the only way to fail is to abandon them.” –Words of wisdom from NBC’s adaptation of “Dracula”

Are you ever tempted to give up on your dreams? How do you keep going when things get rough? Share you thoughts in the comment section below!